


January

by sunflowerwonder



Category: Homestuck
Genre: A Year In The Life fic, But is it really a one night stand if there's multiple one night stands?, Confused 20-Somethings AU, M/M, Minific-a-Month, One Night Stands, Sexual Content, Tumblr user dirkar asking the important questions, brief mention of infidelity, hook-ups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-18
Updated: 2017-03-18
Packaged: 2018-10-07 07:54:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10355691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunflowerwonder/pseuds/sunflowerwonder
Summary: JANUARY:It’s a bitterly cold morning when you wake up, head thrumming with a New Year’s hangover and mind struggling to grasp at an unfamiliar apartment.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Another one originally from [Tumblr](http://dirkar.tumblr.com/post/148673905996/dirkjake-week-day-2-first-encounters-a-year-in). 
> 
> Partially inspired by an anon ask I answered about those Episode app advertisements with the lesbians that keep hooking up at holiday parties until they finally decide just to date. Inspiration strikes in peculiar places, friends.

**JANUARY:**

It’s a bitterly cold morning when you wake up, head thrumming with a New Year’s hangover and mind struggling to grasp at an unfamiliar apartment. The man next to you is warm despite the brisk January weather and his apparent nakedness. He curls an arm around your waist and mumbles something sleepdrunk about the night prior but you’re too dazed in shutter-striped sunlight to really process it.

He’s got green eyes and a big smile and he serves you scrambled eggs for breakfast. You ask for a cup of Lucky Charms on the side and he laughs when you only eat the horseshoes.

When you depart he presses your hastily scribbled number back into your hand. His smile is now slightly apologetic, and you brood about the bittersweetness of it for a week until he’s effectively forgotten.

**FEBRUARY:**

He’s got the dark silhouette of a girl wrapped around his shoulders when you see him again, this time beneath the dizzying strobe lights of a shit nightclub. She’s a leering, abrasive little thing who talks and talks and digs her cerulean nails into his shoulders until you can almost feel the forming spiderweb of bruises yourself.

He kisses you in the bathroom and ruts against you like a teenager and when you breathe out that your car is parked out back, and that he could probably fit through the bathroom window if he wanted to, he laughs into your neck and asks if he can go down on you first. He’d really prefer to be a gentleman.

You get frozen yogurt with mussed hair and still-flushed faces. You eat it in the parking lot on the hood of your car, silently munching on chocolate and peanut butter and whatever the hell clusterfuck of overly saccharine flavors he got.

You kiss him once more. Softer, sweeter, and when you press your number to his palm this time he doesn’t refuse it.

**MARCH:**

He doesn’t call you.

**APRIL:**

He’s a soft press of sunwarmed skin against your sheets. He frowns when he opens his eyes, looking at you as if disappointed with his choice of views. Your own grin falters. The rush of meeting him yet again, at a concert, this time, then atop your bed, thrums your premature excitement down to a low murmur of worry.

“Why didn’t you call,” you ask.

“Infatuatory malarkey and a few good nights aside, you don’t really want to date me,” he says, simply, and departs.

**MAY:**

You want to date him.

**JUNE:**

He’s quieter than you expected. Soft spoken to the waiter and observant of the crowd around him. You’re struck with the sudden and surprising thought that he might be introverted. He was always too loud in the echo of your heartbeat to be anything but vibrant and excitable and sexy and yet, as he politely asks to split the bill, you find him oddly unapproachable.

He broke up with his girlfriend. She cheated on him. You’re not one to judge, considering you convinced him to do the same to her.

“It’s probably for the best,” he tells you when you drop him off at the door to his flat. He kisses you on the cheek and doesn’t ask you inside.

When you return to your own empty apartment you merely collapse stomach-down on your bed, palm rubbing at the warm patch still adorning the side of your face.

**JULY:**

He likes fireworks. You compete to see who can predict the timing of each explosion. His premature excitement to scream “BOOM!” at each ascending flicker sends you into a fit of stifled chuckles, ensuring neither of you win while bright colors burst in the peripheral of your mutual eye contact.

He kisses you in the back of your orange truck he’d affectionately labeled “nifty” and when you ask him home he smiles in agreement.

**AUGUST:**

He’s spread dramatic on your couch, twisting in boxershorts and sweat-drenched skin. The heat is at record highs, the view outside your window blurred in a red and orange sunset pitifully combated by your barely-functioning AC.

“What’s your angle,” he asks, eyes shut and glasses resting on the coffee table. He runs his hands through his hair.

“Is dating you such a murderous offense that I require a motive?” you say. It’s a mumble from your spot on the floor. Your back is pressed to the front of the couch. Your fingers tap on an old laptop.

“You’re not daft,” he says. “Goodness knows you’re not. Surely you’ve noted I’m a bit on the…”

“On the?”

“…The stunted side.”

You snort, looking back and up at him with a short smile. “You’re looking pretty fuckin’ good to me.”

He flushes. “I’m not talking about aesthetics,” he says.

“Well you’re pretty great on all sixes, bro. Professional opinion.”

There’s a slight pause. A hitch in conversation that has you lifting a hand upwards to rest against his thigh. He casts his eyes towards the ceiling.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” he murmurs.

“Same," you state.

**SEPTEMBER:**

“My Grandmother wants me to run her company,” he says from where he’s seated beside you, head resting on your shoulder. “And I’m mucking around here instead.”

You process this for a second, a hand absentmindedly rubbing at the soft cotton of his borrowed shirt, a fading Ironman tee you found on clearance.

“My brother is Dave Strider,” you say, bluntly.

He peels himself away from the comfortable shelf of your shoulder to look at you, surprised.

“Dave Strider?” Jake says. “The cinema director?”

“Just saying. You’re not the only one fucking around in the shadow of some projected legacy bullshit.”

Jake laughs at this, and you tug on his waist until he gets the hint to lean in and press his nose to yours.

“You can muck around with me as much as you’d like, English,” you say. “My angle ain’t to judge.”

**OCTOBER:**

He moves in.

**NOVEMBER:**

You introduce him to your family in a rush of forced homewards migration for a holiday you never quite cared for.

Rose asks him thoughts on the impact of being orphaned versus his current psyche over Thanksgiving takeout. Roxy whispers something in his ear that tints his cheeks red when she passes him KFC mashed potatoes. Dave snaps several hundred pictures of the lot of you, mumbling something about actually raising an emotionally functioning human being.

Rose has preserved your childhood bedroom in a mildly passive aggressive but nonetheless kind manner, keeping even the musty spare sock sprawled out on the rug in mint condition. Jake makes a joke about your tacky poolball sheets, but you think he develops a fondness for them by the time the two of you are tucked within their multi-colored grasp. You're comfortable enough tangled in each other’s limbs to never part.

**DECEMBER:**

You’ve never considered yourself an expert on islands, but you’re pretty sure Jake’s is the prettiest. He himself is a bright ray of sunshine parting the thick forestry as you explore and tumble through the wilds like twelve year olds allowed to finally stray from their backyard for the first time.

His house is huge and while his Grandmother is a bit intimidating, she soon gives you a firm thump on the back in something you believe is akin to acceptance. You decide you kind of like her.

“Let’s stick together, eh?” Jake suggests, pressed into the sand next to you, tide barely lapping at his feet. “Jeez, Strider. I sure like both being with you and the hypothetical ideal of continuing to be with you.”

“Shit man,” you say. “Was that not already an unspoken thing that was a thing?”

**JANUARY:**

You’re together.


End file.
